Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen

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The Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen is the arts collection of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It is located in the state capital Düsseldorf. It has two houses - the K 20 for 20th century arts and the K21 for 21st century arts.

1 History
2 K20
3 K21
4 External links

[edit] History

The Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen started in 1960 by buying 88 works of Paul Klee. So the collection started as foundation Stiftung Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen. It was located in the small castle Schloss Jägerhof in the Hofgarten (Central Park of Düsseldorf) first time, but there was not enough space for the growing arts collection. So the collection moved to a new buildung at the Grabbeplatz with a special architecture, opend in 1986. In the 1990s the Collection got a second building, the old Ständehaus, so it could be divorced into the Collection of 20th and 21st centuries arts. In 1990 the director position changed from Werner Schmalenbach to Armin Zweite. First was especially interested in drawing, the new director led the deep points of his collecting work on sculptures, installations and photo picture arts.

[edit] K20

The K20 at the Grabbeplatz

The K20 is the collection of the 20th century with deep focus on classical modern art. The collection of arts of the time between beginning of 20th century and 1945 includes Fauvism, Expressionism, Pittura Metafisica and Cubism like the works of the artists group "Der Blaue Reiter", Dadaism and Surrealism. There are about 100 works of Paul Klee, who was a professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf until he retired and moved back to his hometown Bern, Swiss, in 1933, because he was unable to work under the conditions of the Nazi-regime. The arts after 1945 has a strong representation of US-American arts, especially works of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Andy Warhol. European arts from this period is mainly represented by Markus Lüpertz, Per Kirkeby, Gerhard Richter and, of course, Joseph Beuys, who taught at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf for decades. The arts collector Günther Ulbricht gave 60 works of Beuys for permanent showing to the collection. Since 1989 there has been a project to invent artist from all over the world to make one arts object for a great room together sometimes. E.g. Dani Karavan, Richard Serra, Richard Long and Daniel Buren worked in such a project. There are some changing arts events, too. For example in 2005 there was a great reprospective on Henri Matisse in the K 20.

There is a library with literature about 20th and 21st century arts in the K 20 building. It has more than 100,000 books, magazines, catalogues, bulletins, videos and CDs.

[edit] K21

The K21 in the Ständehaus

K21, Top etage

K21, Inner Side Foyer

The K 21 includes the collection of the late 20th and 21st century arts starting in the 1980s. It is located in the Ständehaus, were the North Rhine-Westphalien State Parliament worked until the 1988 and the parliament of the Rhine Province of Prussia before. The K 21 was opend in April of 2002.

To the collection belong e.g. works of Marcel Broodthaers and Nam June Paik. Further photographies of Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Struth and Jeff Wall, a video installation of Eija-Liisa Athila and a sculpture of Thomas Schütte. In 2004 it was expanded by the Collection Ackermann including works of Katharina Fritsch, Robert Gober, Paul McCarthy, Reinhard Mucha, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Schütte, Jeff Wall and Franz West. Further therte are exponates from Christian Boltanski, Tony Cragg, Richard Deacon, Thomas Demand, Fischli & Weiss, Georg Herold, Thomas Hirschhorn, Ilya Kabakov, Imi Knoebel, Juan Muñoz, Tony Oursler, Sigmar Polke, Bill Viola and Rachel Whiteread. A deep oint is the Arte Povera (Jannis Kounellis, Mario Merz, Michelangelo Pistoletto).